Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I don't believe developers are lazy in general. If they've been given the chance to work on a AAA game, they want to make the most of that chance - if nothing else because they know that that game will be the most important thing on their resume. Publisher politics plays a much bigger role, pushing the game out before its ready because it fits some publishing schedule.

The 360 in particular has in effect stopped developers pushing limits of PC graphics. This is not entirely a bad thing - we used to get games like the original Far Cry, which was an utterly stupid game with the only selling point that the graphics were impressive - but it has gone much too far. I was yawning my way through AC3 recently, and it's almost embarrassing how it's a bad console port. Drawing distances are terrible, and all texture loads are terribly late to compensate for the tiny 256MB memory of the console. The new consoles update the limits, but they essentially replace them with a midrange GPU of a generation that is close to two years old by now (except for the memory). The last gen at least stretched the limits at launch.

I wonder if this might not be the end of the impressive 3D games. Intel integrated graphics are improving to the point of putting quite decent discrete graphics cards out of business, and if the rumors about Intel ditching most of the PCIe lanes on future CPU generations are true, they might kill that market almost entirely - at least on laptops. AMD is in trouble already (due to the CPUs - the GPUs are doing OK) - nVidia is flailing, with Tegra 4 not getting any design wins in mobile and the Geforce shut out of the consoles. Both have cancelled multiple intended graphics cards to save investment money. nVidia is complaining loudly about how the shrinks don't give them anything in performance anymore. They might just pack up and call it a day - nVidia going into the compute thing and trying to license their graphics knowhow to others, and AMD focusing on their integrated graphics.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

I don't believe developers are lazy in general. If they've been given the chance to work on a AAA game, they want to make the most of that chance - if nothing else because they know that that game will be the most important thing on their resume. Publisher politics plays a much bigger role, pushing the game out before its ready because it fits some publishing schedule.

But the complete game is the resume piece. You really think a piss-poor PC port matters in the long run? (Not unless its a PC centric developer) If it sold gangbusters on consoles no one will give a shit; Like squashing bugs, the port is the last step in the process, and the effort you usually put in is noticeable.

I was also thinking, I'd hate to be a PC developer. I wouldn't know – but I imagine have ing to worry about graphics cards and driver's etc. is a pain in the ass.

That also made me think of a possible side-effect of all this: Is it possible that this has had a democratizing effect for PC players? i.e., those with weaker rigs have had access to more games because they're made with the XBOX and PS3 in mind? Or has it made things worse for weaker rigs, because most of the piss-poor ports run like shit because they're unoptimised?

But the complete game is the resume piece. You really think a piss-poor PC port matters in the long run? (Not unless its a PC centric developer) If it sold gangbusters on consoles no one will give a shit; Like squashing bugs, the port is the last step in the process, and the effort you usually put in is noticeable.

If it is a true port (like a Mac game usually is) it's not made by the same guy. If it's a second deployment target (like it is if they're launched simultaneously) then it might be an afterthought, but it is more likely that whoever tested it spent less effort on the PC version, as there is no certification involved (note: development studios are not responsible for testing - the publisher is. Always always always.)

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar

I was also thinking, I'd hate to be a PC developer. I wouldn't know – but I imagine have ing to worry about graphics cards and driver's etc. is a pain in the ass.

Nah. If there's a bug in nVidia's driver, they call nVidia's developer support team and talk to someone who can either fix it or tell them how to work around it. This is not the shiny marble facade of Apple we're talking about here - both AMD and nVidia do a lot of this sort of thing. If you're even decently promising, nVidia and AMD come to you to offer support - that's what their programs (Gaming Evolved and The Way it's Meant to be Played) are all about.

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar

That also made me think of a possible side-effect of all this: Is it possible that this has had a democratizing effect for PC players? i.e., those with weaker rigs have had access to more games because they're made with the XBOX and PS3 in mind? Or has it made things worse for weaker rigs, because most of the piss-poor ports run like shit because they're unoptimised?

At this point, it's a net positive, because you can game decently even on modern integrated graphics - also party because of WoW, which achieved some of its success by running on EVERYTHING. It was more problematic a few years ago, when the X360 was an OK powerful computer that essentially became the baseline and anything below or equal to that got shafted. The issue now is that someone sitting on a card like the 5770 above is going to find his computer suddenly getting way more pathetic when the next gen games start coming down the pipe.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

The Xbox 360 version of Battlefield 4 will include a 14GB install option for optimal performance, and developer DICE reccomends you use it.

Battlefield 4 will not function at all without a mandatory 2GB install, a new EA FAQ page has revealed (thanks, VG247). You can then choose further install options for each of the game's two discs.

Multiplayer is again housed on disc one and has an additional 6.6GB of content.

Disc two houses Battlefield 4's campaign, which bolts on a further 5.8GB of data.

"We highly recommend performing these additional installations to make sure you have the best experience possible in Battlefield 4," the FAQ concluded.

"At this point it's safe to say that the current-gen consoles fall significantly short in delivering anything like the full Battlefield 4 experience," Digital Foundry wrote in its Battlefield 4 beta analysis. "The game is still very playable and fun in its own right but there's no doubt that players sticking with these versions of the game will be missing out on a significant element of the full experience."

As far as multiplayer gaming on consoles is concerned, single-platform protectionism has been the de facto standard for years now. Series like Call of Duty sell millions of nearly identical copies across the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, yet players can only take part in online matches against others playing on the same platform. Now, console makers are showing encouraging signs of lowering these artificial walls and letting developers create games that cross between platforms more easily.

Microsoft is also making vague gestures toward the idea of supporting more cross-platform play, at least for PC players. In a recent interview with AusGamers, Microsoft Studios General Manager Phil Harrison was asked whether increased cloud capabilities and similar architectures might lead to more shared online play between games on Xbox One and PC. "I’m not allowed to leak things, but I think what you’re talking about makes a lot of sense," was the incredibly suggestive reply.

Before I become my usual pessimistic self, anything that gives multiplayer games a larger user base is better for lag, better for matchmaking, and better for community longevity.

The bad: Keep consoles and PC separate. It won't work.

The million dollar question: So PS4 and Xbone54 are integrated multi. Can I actually play with my friends? I mean seriously, how will it work? Will other consoles be thrown into lobbies at random, or will there be some kind of universal system allowing other platformers to party up? Seems unlikely.

The million dollar question: So PS4 and Xbone54 are integrated multi. Can I actually play with my friends? I mean seriously, how will it work? Will other consoles be thrown into lobbies at random, or will there be some kind of universal system allowing other platformers to party up? Seems unlikely.

That's a terrible idea. The reason to use the console is its simplicity. If you allow mouse & keyboard you're effectively forcing anyone who like to play competitively to use it or else face a massive penalty.

That's a terrible idea. The reason to use the console is its simplicity. If you allow mouse & keyboard you're effectively forcing anyone who like to play competitively to use it or else face a massive penalty.

How is a controller easier than mouse&keyboard? Shooters were developed for m&kb and then shoehorned into the controller paradigm.

Anyway, you can make controller only matches if you like. Not a big deal.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

“PS3was the top selling console this month, breaking the 32-month streak of the Xbox 360 leading console hardware sales from January 2011 to August 2013,” said analyist Liam Callahan of market research firm, NPD Group. GTA V played a big role here.

“The PS3’s success this month was largely driven by sales of the ‘PS3 SYSTEM SUPER SLIM 500GB GRAND THEFT AUTO V BUNDLE’ demonstrating how Grand Theft Auto V can shake things up on in hardware as well as software.”

• The XBOX bundle seems to be only available through their site
• As fars I can't tell it doesn't include kinect (I felt for sure this would explain the price discrepancy)
• It nearly twice as much for half the storage

Pretty effin' big deal. That said, it's hard to pin down if its because of the difference in bundle availability, bundle price, more GTA fans on PS3, or XBOX fatigue after the fiasco this summer.

If this had been about an Apple part, I wouldn't have reacted - there are hundreds of these - but this is Sony doing its best to Apple-y in its design. Silly pagination to maximize the pageviews, but worth a read anyway, about how driving games and shooters have opposing requirements, what to learn from the 360 controller and developing the design through testing options and iterating.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

The Drivatar team at Cambridge's Microsoft Research campus has been creating adaptive AI opponents based on real users since the first Forza Motorsport was released on the original Xbox in 2005. But previous games were only able to learn from local races and had to process and learn from that data on local hardware. Greenawalt says being able to aggregate and process data in the cloud generates results that are "like night and day" from what has been possible before.

Right now, that ocean of data is more like a gentle stream, with about 400 members of the Forza team contributing Drivatar data. Even so, the system has already been able to learn some behaviors just by analyzing thousands of individual races, completely on its own.

"We didn't design it to do anything," Greenawalt said. "It looks at all this data and it crunches the numbers and correlates and generalizes and comes up the behavior. Like, 'Oh, I saw 20 percent of the population, when there was a car in front of it on Laguna Seca, they actually went for the outside and then dove on the inside.' ... We look at it and we go 'Oh, he faked him out.' The computer doesn't need to know [that name of the move], it just knows you did this in that situation. So it's learned how to fake."

The danger from learning based on real humans, of course, is that the system might end up learning from groups of racers who are either unintentionally bad or intentionally goofing around in the game. Even in the limited sample of developers currently contributing to the system, Greenawalt admits "we have asshats in our group that I work with every day. They're already trying to train it and troll it."

This is where some minimal human judgment comes in to prune the more lackluster learned behaviors generated by the Drivatar system. "We manually tell it... 'Don't learn that type of thing,'" Greenawalt said. "It creates a new behavior, it says 'Hey, I've seen a lot of this, I'm going to do this thing.' We say 'Don't do that whole thing, and if you ever see anybody do this thing, just forget about it.'"

It'd be nice if the AI could separate behaviors into groups to create types of drivers.

This also create an interesting possibility for the future of competitive online. Imagine this translates to FPS. Imagine further they can then refine it playing styles. Now you have more human like bots that you can play against and the more people play against them, the more varied and competitive they get (Think Black Ops training mode). Not anytime soon, though

I find that oddly reassuring. Presumably new effects and tech put enough of a strain on the system that running with 18 players was no longer possible on current gen tech. Now if it was missing from the next-gen ports... that'd be interesting indeed.

The short story is that Xbox Live and the OS, especially in functions that involve XBL, are a complete ****ing mess. One source says we aren’t talking weeks until it works correctly but “months.” Things like parties dropping people when moving from one thing to another. Connectivity issues. Missed invites. Friend requests not working, etc.

He then said “If all you are doing is running a game and that’s the only app things are fine.”

So why do think things are going wrong?

“The system OS and network integration was written by a group of people who do not play games. They don’t understand why things were set up in the ways they were designed by J Allard back in ’05.”

So… what changed?

“Let me get into some technical detail regarding it – on 360, the OS handles all of the party and chat functionality. All you do is hook up the XBL VOiP OS API into your game, and it does most of the work for you. With it results in is a shared experience across multiple entertainment. If you’re watching movies or playing games, you can do it together. However, this system is entirely different on Xbox One. So, lets say me, you, and Thuway have xbox one’s that are online. We are signed in our profiles. Sitting at the home screen, we are considered to be in a “Xbox Party” on the server. There are no more ‘party leaders’. With that said if any one of us decide to start a game, the party is shifted over to that game’s party system. Each game now has their custom written VOIP.” (Pete note: shoutout to thuway!)

“In essence, it is almost EXACTLY how it was on the PS3, and it is in those API “handshakes” that is breaking the online experience.”